Madhusudan_Das

II
REMINISCENCE OF
HIGHCOURT JUDGE
(1)
A PRACTICAL POLITICIAN
MANMATHA NATH MUKERJEE
When the history of Modern Orissa comes to be written the
name to which the greatest prominence will be given will be that of
Mr. Madhusudan Das. To him primarily and secondarily to the band
of other patriots who came in his wake, that she owes her gradual
rise and her present position as a unit of the Indian Federation. And
for this the credit goes in small measure to the province of Bengal,
for Mr. Madhusudan Das received no inconsiderable part of his early
training in that province at a time when that province was at the
height of her glory, those were days of which rightly has it been said
that "what Bengal thinks today, the rest of India will think tomorrow".
It was some twenty years or a little more that I had the pleasure
of meeting Mr. Madhusudan Das for the first time. I have a vivid
recollection of the place and the hour of that meeting. It was at a
time when his Utkal Tannery had received a terrible blow and when,
though shattered physically as well as financially, he had made up his
mind to take courage in both hands and work with the ardour of
youth for rehabilitating his favourite venture on which he had pinned
his faith. For an hour or so we discussed matters and. at the end of
the discussion the impression that he left on my mind was that he
was a personality far above the ordinary. Since then we met off and
on; and every time I saw him, my respect and admiration for him
grew more and more. Today, when writing these few lines I feel that
men of his stamp and stamina are rare indeed.
I have always thought that he was the first in point of time to
rise head and shoulder over others to realise that it is idle to trade in
mere past glories and to visualise that the rebirth of Orissa could only
be achieved by effecting improvement in her material welfare. He
was not a visionary but a practical politician)"- one who had faith in
the justness of the causes he advocated and believed in the lessons